Friday, October 27, 2006

Wayne Madsen has been writing about the use of agents provocateurs in causing riots in Europe, riots which right-wingers in Europe and the United States are using to promote the usual ‘clash of civilizations’ Islamophobia. It is quite clear that the French police, under the direction of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a Jew, are doing whatever they can to cause the riots to occur (also see the Wayne Madsen Report for October 26, 2006). Sarkozy can simultaneously polish his law-and-order credentials, advance his political prospects, create alarm over Islam in Europe, and advance the Israeli cause of scaring French Jews into moving to Israel. Sarkozy is using the anniversary of the riots to publicly announce that the media shouldn’t make a big deal out of the situation (as presumably making a big deal out of the situation is reserved for Sarkozy himself).

Now Madsen is reporting that Udo Ulfkotte has written a book published in Germany connecting the riots directly to provocations caused by Israeli intelligence units. The French suburbs are a tinder box of resentment caused by poverty, unemployment, and racism. It would be very easy for an agent provocateur, simply by tossing a stone at a group of policemen and disappearing into the crowd, to create a riot really caused by social problems, a riot which the Zionists can then blame on radical Islam and the ‘clash of civilizations’.

Ulfkotte is a vehement opponent of Islamist influence in Europe (and yet another guy wrong about the supposed attack on Iran), and particularly connections between European security agencies and Islamist radicals around the world, so his conclusions about Israeli involvement, which seem to undermine his general position, are very strong.

Notice how Zionism is the only nationalism whose propaganda war impacts detrimentally on the lives of people all over the world, including Europe. The Zionist imperative of promoting the ‘clash of civilizations’ to allow it to steal land from Muslims requires bad ideas which ruin lives everywhere.

The Germans reported that one of their ships sailing off the coast of Lebanon was fired upon by Israeli F-16 fighters. Israel immediately denied the incident, and then came up with a convolutednon-denialdenial. We are left with the conclusion that Israel did fire, but did not intend to hit, the German ship (the proverbial ‘shot across the bow’). The attack worked, with the Germans cravenly agreeing to restrict the ambit of their ships to six nautical miles off the coast of Lebanon.

Why would Israel do something this stupid? For one thing, Germany is restricted from complaining too loudly, or will receive a guaranteed reminder about the Holocaust. Israel can get away with just about anything. The real reason for the attack probably relates to one of the reasons for the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Besides attempting to frame the Egyptians for the attack (not a consideration now), Israel was afraid that the Liberty was close enough to listen in on its schemes. In fact, that is probably why the frame-up of the Egyptians didn’t work. To stop American spying, the Liberty was attacked. We can only assume that the Israelis feared that the Germans were using the excuse of the peacekeeping efforts to sneak in close enough to hear what they weren’t supposed to hear.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

“He sought help in psychoanalysis. One diagnosis suggested a narcissistic personality disorder - defined as an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance and uniqueness. Others diagnosed Black’s problems as arising from his loveless, dysfunctional home. Intense psychiatry cured him of his immediate self-destructive urge, but several personality traits remained, including a sense of his entitlement and a lack of conscience.”

and (my emphasis in red):

“His psychological journey was interrupted by his parents’ deaths. His mother succumbed to liver cancer on June 19, 1976. Ten days later, flopped in his armchair, regularly refilling his glass with neat vodka, George Black sermonised 31-year-old Conrad on wealth and power late into the night.

In the early hours, he slowly climbed the stairs to bed. As he reached the top, Conrad Black heard cracking wood and saw his father fall over the banister onto the ground floor. Carried by Conrad into the library, George Black said that he no longer had the will to live. ‘Life is hell,’ he told his son as they awaited the doctor. ‘Most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit.’

The doctor said he was unlikely to survive. Despite the prognosis, Conrad returned to his own home and watched a Charlie Chan film. He was interrupted by a telephone call. George Black was dead. Many, occasionally including his son, believed he had committed suicide.”

Canadian gothic. Two alcoholic parents, suicide of one (so his son could see it!), psychoanalysis: no matter what kind of face they put to the world, these people hate themselves. Tom Bower has a way with words: “occasionally including his son”. You’d never see anything like this in a Canadian paper, where a combination of the old boys’ club and terror of a libel suit means that the real history of Conrad won’t be written until after he is firmly planted in the ground. It won’t be pretty.

Black appears to be delusionally convinced that he will be entirely vindicated at trial. Fitzgerald has the testimony of his co-conspirator, David Radler, to work with - Radler has a Howard-Hughes-style terror of germs, so to reduce his prison time and exposure to filth he agreed to rat out his lifelong ‘friend’, Conrad - plus the delicious allegations, so beloved by prosecutors, of how Conrad used shareholder money to treat himself and his evil (ultra-ultra-Zionist) wife, Barbara Amiel, to some billionaire perks. Black is going to appear as yet another foreigner come to steal money from Americans, and will thus be another in the line of rich guys who are getting hammered in the American court system (Black should ask fellow Canadians Bernie Ebbers and Alan Eagleson whether he should be so confident of winning). On top of that, Black and Amiel, on their best behavior, are as likeable as a root canal coupled with a prostrate examination. It will be a day of great joy when the inevitable huge sentence is handed down.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Cryptome has the Department of Defense whitewash report on Able Danger. The quick summary:

“The investigation addressed nine specific allegations raised in the media and by various Members of Congress. We did not substantiate those allegations. The evidence did not support assertions that Able Danger identified the September 11, 2001, terrorists nearly a year before the attack, that Able Danger team members were prohibited from sharing information with law enforcement authorities, or that DoD officials reprised against LTC Shaffer for his disclosures regarding Able Danger.”

So it’s all good. The big problem they had was that a number of separate, independent witnesses all confirmed that Mohammed Atta was on one of their big charts, in a prominent enough position to be remembered years later by all. The whitewash team handles this at part ‘IV. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS, A. Did the Able Danger team identify Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 terrorists before September 11, 2001?’

The first witness, ‘CAPT XXXXXX’, they wore down with repeated interviews, the normal technique seen in conspiracy debunking (you keep being interviewed, with pressure in between, until you give the ‘right’ answer). They used a prop mock-up of the original chart – it has to be a mock-up as the original has, of course, disappeared – to convince him that he couldn’t have seen what he unequivocally testified he had seen.

They use Commander (CDR) XXXXXX, U.S. Navy, who served as CAPT XXXXXX's executive officer from March 2002 to March 2003 aboard the USS Estocin, to confirm that the mock-up chart is the chart that CAPT XXXXXX showed him. He is "90 percent" certain and "real sure" that the charts were the same, despite the fact he hadn’t seen the original chart for years. He also, however, confirms that CAPT XXXXXX had mentioned Atta.

Mr. XXXXXX, Assistant for Strategic Initiative, Special Operations and Combating Terrorism, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, stated that:

“. . . both [LTC] Tony Shaffer and [CAPT] XXXXXX alluded to the fact - alluded to the fact - that prior to 9/11, there were linkages to some of the 9/11 participants that came back to the United States at a time when, for example, Mohammed Atta might have been in the United States. . .. I recall is that they alluded to the fact that three of the 9/11 hijackers had showed up in the Able Danger data base.”

This seems conclusive to me, but they parry it by stating:

“Mr. XXXXXX was confident, however, that there was no mention of a ‘Brooklyn’ or ‘Brooklyn, NY’ cell.”

Of course, the Brooklyn aspect is just one part of the whistleblower allegations, and the fact they did not mention that part of the allegations to him in no way changes the fact that his evidence is that they said they saw three 9/11 hijackers on the chart made for Able Danger before September 11.

The whitewashers then bring in a ringer, someone with a position in the Pentagon who can be counted on to confirm the Official Story:

“GEN Norton A. Schwartz, U.S. Air Force, currently, Commander, U.S. Transportation Command, and then-Director of Operations for the Joint Staff, testified that in late 2003 or early 2004, CAPT XXXXXX presented to him a PowerPoint briefing related to data mining. CAPT XXXXXX provided us a copy of the presentation, entitled "Strategic Planning Initiative." The three objectives of the briefing were listed on a slide as: ‘Demonstrate a Strategic Planning approach,’ ‘Demonstrate a complete Horizontal Fusion strategy for all-source information,’ and ‘Request a Mission.’

The briefing contained slides depicting various analytical tools used by the Able Danger mission team and examples of computerized visual displays, but made no mention of having identified Mohammed Atta or other terrorists prior to 9/11. GEN Schwartz confirmed that CAPT XXXXXX did not mention he had identified Mohammed Atta during the brief. However, CAPT XXXXXX disputed GEN Schwartz' recollection, telling us, ‘Atta was mentioned as a punctuation at the end of the brief. I told him how close we had gotten to catching the bad guys of 9/11.’”

The whitewashers go on to create the implication that CAPT XXXXXX created the Atta link to attempt to sell the data mining concept as a weapon against terrorism.

The whitewashers have even more trouble with Dr. XXXXXX, who also saw the charts:

“In our first interview Dr. XXXXXX initially testified that Mohammed Atta was ‘highlighted’ on the Orion chart and associated with wealthy individuals and religious leaders. She specifically identified the Brooklyn cell as being distinct from the area in which Mohammed Atta was located. Dr. XXXXXX stated, And it [the chart] also associated him [Mohammed Atta] with some wealthy Middle Eastern players and some religious holy men from the region we would be interested in. I also believe that that chart had on it, to the best of my memory, several other cells, one of them being the Brooklyn cell that I had been looking at for a long time.

However, later in that interview, when asked by an investigator where Mohammed Atta was in relation to the Brooklyn cell, Dr. XXXXXX responded, ‘I believe he would have been part of the Brooklyn cell.’ Dr. XXXXXX was unable to recall with certainty how many other people were depicted in the Brooklyn cell and stated, ‘I can't say with any. . . . Four or five.’ She recalled the photograph of Mohammed Atta was ‘very unclear,’ ‘granular,’ and ‘grainy’ while the quality of the other pictures was ‘pretty good.’”

Again with the quibbling over Brooklyn, without impugning the key point that Atta had been identified. The repeated interview technique wears down her certainty, but they never manage to shake the fact that Atta had been identified in the charts.

Now its gets interesting:

“Dr. XXXXXX testified that on September 25, 2001, Representative Curt Weldon possessed a copy of the Orion chart, which included a picture of Mohammed Atta, that she had provided to CAPT XXXXXX in January 2000. She stated she was in Representative Weldon's office and they were preparing to go to the White House to meet with I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, then-Chief of Staff and Assistant for National Security Affairs to Vice President Richard B. Cheney. Before they left the office, Dr. XXXXXX asserted, Representative Weldon retrieved the chart from a closet where he had kept other charts. In response to our question, ‘Do you recall [Representative Weldon] having a chart with Mohammed Atta's picture or name on it?’, Dr. XXXXXX responded, ‘And Atta's picture, I believe, to the best of my memory, I saw it in the upper left-hand corner in that chart.’

Dr. XXXXXX testified the chart was brought to Mr. Libby's office and there were other people in the room. She remembered the people included Representatives Christopher H. Shays and Dan Burton; Mr. Thomas J. Ridge, then-Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, Office of Homeland Security, and future-Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and ‘some of Ridge's kind of deputies in this new department they were setting up.’ There were other people in the office that she did not recognize. Dr. XXXXXX testified, ‘I'm going through my mind, and what I have when I walked into Scooter Libby's front reception area, and I unwrapped a lot of charts,’ but she could not recall whether she presented the chart depicting Mohammed Atta while in Mr. Libby's office.

Dr. XXXXXX testified that she departed Mr. Libby's office with Representatives Weldon and Shays and went to the office of Mr. Stephen J. Hadley, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and then-Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor. Dr. XXXXXX testified that she had a ‘60 percent’ confidence level that the chart with Mohammed Atta's photograph was shown to Mr. Hadley. Regarding whether the chart contained a photograph of Mohammed Atta, Dr. XXXXXX stated, And the reason I have a higher confidence level is I saw the picture of the World Trade Center and what I thought was the World Trade Center and what I thought were the two embassy bombings on it, which to me was the trigger that reminded me of this chart.

Dr. XXXXXX added, however, that she did not see the picture of Mohammed Atta on the chart. She stated ‘I didn't see it that day. However, from my memory of that chart, I knew that it would have had to have been here.’

Representative Weldon wrote about the September 25,2001, meeting with Mr. Hadley in his book Countdown to Terror, which was published in June 2005. At page 18 he wrote, On September 25, 2001, just 2 weeks after 9/11, I met in the White House with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser to the President. I presented him with a 2' x 3' chart I had been given in the aftermath of 9/11. The chart was developed in 1999, as part of a Defense Department initiative dubbed ‘Able Danger.’ It diagrammed the affiliations of al Qaeda and showed Mohammed Atta and the infamous Brooklyn cell. Hadley's response was ‘I have to show this to the big man.’”

The whitewashers then purport to impugn this massively damaging testimony by quibbling over whether it was she or Weldon who brought the chart! I note that they might have solved the mystery of the missing chart by simply asking Stephen Hadley for it, but I guess that would be too easy.

The whitewashers then attempt to deal with LTC Shaffer, the whistleblower with the clearest testimony about Atta and the Brooklyn cell. More quibbling over details, but no substantive rebuttal of his evidence.

Then they deal with Mr. XXXXXX who was employed by Orion, the chart making company, from October 1999 to August 2000:

“Mr. XXXXXX told us that he delivered a chart that included Mohammed Atta's photograph to LIWA in January or February 2000. He recalled that the chart was produced in response to a request from LIWA in which Orion was tasked to perform a study related to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. He characterized the tasking as ‘a study of Omar Abdul Rahman . . . and what other personnel may be associated with his particular cell or groups up in New York City.’ While Mr. XXXXXX could not recall the precise request from LIWA, he provided, ‘The way I remember it, it was 'give us ties and associates of the New York City, what happened in New York City, the people known to cause the New York City issue [referring to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing].'’”

and:

“Regarding the photograph of Mohammed Atta, Mr. XXXXXX testified, ‘It was a very grainy, but it was clear enough that you could make out that stare, his high cheekbones, the very, the very pronounced his eyes. Yeah, definitely Atta.’ He also stated, ‘It was bad. It looked like it had been transmitted over a low line or it was, had been copied multiple times. It was very grainy.’ While Mr. XXXXXX had a clear recollection of Mohammed Atta's photograph, he did not recall whether there was a name attached to the photograph.”

and:

“Mr. XXXXXX testified he had been in possession of this chart and others produced by Orion because he collected charts that were produced for customers but not delivered to them because of quality problems, such as blurred or smudged lines. He stated he originally kept these charts in the trunk of his automobile. He stated that he later moved the charts from his car trunk and placed them under his bed. He recalled that shortly after September 11, 2001, when he first saw photographs identifying Mohammed Atta as one of the terrorists, he recognized him. Mr. XXXXXX testified, ‘Yeah and I'm looking and I said, Jesus, I recognized his picture instantly. . . . Yeah, I went to my chart to compare and I said there he is.’

Mr. XXXXXX stated that after discovering Mohammed Atta's photograph on the chart he told numerous people about his identification of Mohammed Atta and showed them the chart. He stated, ‘I spoke to everybody that would listen to me,’ ‘I talked to quite a few people,’ and ‘I told them we had previously identified this person as a known terrorist.’”

More quibbling ensues, based largely on Mr. XXXXXX’s sensible refusal to turn over to the Pentagon the names of the people he talked to (who wants their friends to be waterboarded!). They then mention two more witnesses who recalled the name Mohammed Atta from the Able Danger project.

After all this, when you might think they were setting up a conclusive report that Atta had been identified by Able Danger, they concluded:

“. . . the Able Danger team did not identify Mohammed Atta or any of the 9/11 terrorists as possible threats at any time during its existence. Further, witnesses purporting to have seen a chart obtained by the Able Danger team from LIWA but produced by Orion depicting Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 terrorists were in error. Although it is conceivable that the name ‘Mohammed Atta’ or a photograph of Mohammed Atta may have appeared along with thousands of other bits of information examined by the Able Danger team, neither Mohammed Atta nor any other 9/11 terrorist was identified in a manner that would have linked them to al Qaeda or justified more focused information gathering.”

Based on slight inconsistencies in peripheral matters, they basically call all the witnesses liars, despite the fact that their independent testimony backs up the major point that Able Danger had identified Atta prior to September 11. Their conclusion is so clumsy that I have to wonder whether it was written by people attempting to present the truth in the guise of a whitewash.

The issue is presented as a problem concerning whether Able Danger could have identified the September 11 terrorists in time to stop the tragedy, but, of course, that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that the guy using the identity ‘Mohammed Atta’ was leading a terrorist cell in Brooklyn at a time when the original Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian student we are supposed to believe was a radical Muslim leading the attack under the direction of Osama bin Laden, was documented in Hamburg. I have written:

“. . . the terrorist Atta can't be the same guy as the student in Hamburg. However, the entire story of September 11 is constructed on that identity. The biography of the Egyptian Atta, how he became radicalized attending a mosque in Hamburg, formed part of the al Qaeda terrorist cell in Hamburg, and then came to America to lead a terrorist attack, depends on the American 'Atta' being the same guy as the Egyptian/Hamburg Atta (by 'Atta', I mean the guy who assumed the Atta identity for his operations in the United States). Able Danger confirms that they are not the same guy, and that we really know nothing about the background of the American 'Atta'. Since we can now see that the FBI story with respect to Atta is a lie, and we have no way of knowing anything about who he really was or what motivated him, we can see that the stories about every other one of the nineteen is similarly flawed. If the FBI can lie about Atta, they can lie about all of them. Suddenly, the connection between al Qaeda and September 11, which depended entirely on the connections to the Hamburg radical Muslim cell, disappears.”

It is not a coincidence that the FBI decided to pick the middle of an election campaign to start a public investigation of Curt Weldon, an investigation for relatively picayune corruption (at least compared to corruption trencherman like Hastert). Weldon asked too many questions about Able Danger, and has to pay the price.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Norman Finkelstein has predicted that Israel is two wars away from complete destruction. That sounds about right. The next one, psychologically required after losing in Lebanon, will be a partial success, setting up the final over-reach.

The Zionists have put all their eggs in the basket of American support, but that basket has developed two holes. One is the paradox that support for the Zionist series of wars and conflicts has so weakened the United States that it is no longer a reliable ally. Faced with a real crisis in Korea, the Americans are powerless to do anything, and have to rely on China to fix things. It’s China that is going around the world – Africa, South America, Asia – sealing up oil contracts, and not, contrary to what I keep reading about the Bush Administration’s great geopolitical plans, the United States. It’s Russia that is methodically reestablishing its power over the ‘Stans, Ukraine, and Georgia, and dangling promises of hydrocarbons at Europe. Americans are so nackered from fighting Israel’s wars that the world’s sole superpower isn’t so super any longer.

The other hole is the fact that Americans are slowly waking up to the power of the Lobby, and don’t like it. A Zogby International poll (Zogby remains the only fair American polling company, as witnessed by the fact that its results are correct, instead of the ‘push-polls’ sold by all the other corrupted pollsters):

“ . . . reveals that 39% of the American public ‘agree’ or ‘somewhat agree’ that ‘the work of the Israel lobby on Congress and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran.’ However, a similar number, 40%, ‘strongly disagreed’ or ‘somewhat disagreed’ with this position. Some 20% of the public, or more than one in five, were not sure.”

This despite the fact that a significant minority of Americans are religiously insane (if you extract the Christian Zionists from the Israel Lobby poll, it appears that practically every sane American opposes the Lobby). Perhaps more importantly, 50% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 agreed that the Israel lobby had a hand in forming the current pro-war policy. The tide is turning.

It is time to consider what a post-Israel Middle East will look like, and how Judaismhandles post-Zionist Jewish settlement in what used to be Israel.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

“Naive Liberal fantasies of what could happen if the Democrats take over. 10 hearings that you can bet will never take place, even if the Dems gain veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate. If there is one thing I've learned in recent years, is that nothing will really change if the Democratic Party takes power. Their goal isn't to fix government, but to be the ones receiving the bribes and living above the law. Don't underestimate how much support the neofascists have received from the Dems since Dubya's inauguration. They both want the same thing: absolute power. You think Hillary would reinstate Habeas Corpus? She voted to eliminate it. We have only one political party in this country, with two PR fronts. Pretending to be in opposition is just a ploy to mollify the masses, by conning them into thinking they actually have a choice.”

The Democrats have the sameproblem as the Republicans. They exist solely to collect bribes, try to gain more power, and satisfy their Zionist paymasters. Cracking down on corruption would make it more difficult for the Democrats to collect their share, so it won’t happen. Bush impeachment? Don’t make me laugh. Even if Diebold doesn’t do its job and the Democrats squeeze out a tiny sliver of control of one or both houses of Congress – an extremely unlikely eventuality, and Rove is already preparing the way to mute the outrage at a Republican ‘victory’ by boasting of how confident he is – nothing whatsoever will change. In fact, a Democrat-controlled Congress would be much worse for immorality in American foreign policy.

The biggest single problem for the International Zionist Cabal is the internet. Before the internet, there was no useful way to present the truth, and we have seen Israel grow into a monster, with all news of its horrors suppressed by the mainstream media (the lack of press coverage, which allowed the crazies to run unchecked, has done fatal damage to Israel’s real interests). Following up on the last words of this posting, one of the main Cabal-meisters, Michael Chertoff, is settingthe table for the end of free discussion on the internet. Since there will be no way to distinguish ‘disaffected’ future radicals from everybody else, the internet will be slowly – or not so slowly – squeezed out of existence. By the time people get around to noticing, the internet will be limited to being another method to sell stuff.

I intend to write about why Zionism, of all the crazed nationalisms in the world, is uniquely dangerous. There are, for example, insane Greater Pakistan nationalists who would like to see Pakistan extend over much of India and all the way from Turkey to China. It won’t happen. In contrast, International Zionism has one of its key operatives installed as the head of American Homeland Security. Chertoff has real power, and can do serious damage to free speech (as well as every other kind of freedom that might possibly even slightly interfere with the progress of the Zionist Project). Ending the internet as we know it is one of the reasons that Zionsim is uniquely dangerous.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Iraq Body Count is in a snitbecause the new study published by the Lancet regarding the 655,000 excess deaths seriously trumps the numbers they have been publishing. There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the methodology of the new study, which was made in the face of a determined American effort not to publicize what is really going on. Americans are obviously morally responsible for the deaths caused by their own troops (all the deaths follow from a completely illegal invasion justified on the basis of what everybody now acknowledges was a pack of lies), as well as those deaths caused as a result of the sectarian violence which followed the American attack on Iraq. The number of deaths caused by America dwarfs any number of deaths that might have been caused by Saddam over the same period. The carnage is intentional, required so the Zionists can achieve their goal of breaking Iraq into three parts.

It is so typical that the ‘progressives’ end up in a pissing match over the numbers, paralleling the bizarre attempts by the right to debunk the study (something like: ‘we didn’t murder 655,000 innocent civilians, it was only 497,000!’). These attempts put the Bush apologists in the same position as the guy who answers the question ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ The Iraq Body Count now finds itself helping the right-wingers. Nice going! If you have their counter on your website, it is time to take if off.

If you take the Lancet study numbers and add to it the Afghanistan numbers, and a few more people dead here and there due to the Bush Administration, and remember that Bush is only three quarters done, you are left with the inescapable conclusion that George Bush is one of the greatest mass murderers in modern times, up there with guys like Pol Pot. Americans finally have something to be proud of!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Lenin’s Tombsummarizes some of the plausible perpetrators of the Lockerbie explosion, other than Libya, which appears to have had nothing to do with it (despite copping to it in order to be readmitted to the international financial community!). Besides the fact that the Americans paid some of the witnesses to testify, there are a few other problems:

The Crown violated procedure in withholding German police evidence at the trial, evidence translated at considerable expense, and evidence which pointed to other parties. The main person implicated by the German evidence was a key Crown witness, who testified in return for immunity from prosecution! I’d be inclined to bring the lawyers in question up before their professional body.

A senior Scottish police officer has revealed that the key physical evidence used in the conviction, a small piece of circuit board, had beenplanted.

The circuit board was miraculously discovered months after the explosion, many miles from Lockerbie. The manufacturer claims it was not the type supplied to Libya, despite the fact that this connection is the keystone of the prosecution’s case. There is in fact evidence that the board was of a type in possession of the CIA.

The CIA may have been allowing the smuggling of drugs on the flight (as part of a scheme to obtain Hezbollah help in releasing American hostages held in Beirut; of course, this may itself be a cover story to hide culpable extracurricular CIA drug smuggling), and a potential DIA whistleblower to the smuggling, Major CharlesMcKee, was on the flight, providing a double motive to kill the whistleblower and frame Libya.

The only thing that bothers me about this is that the frame-up is now pointing towards Hezbollah/Iran, a little too convenient in light of current Zionist attacks. It would be unfortunate if this exercise in coming clean over Libya was just another trick against Iran.

It is interesting that Vincent Cannistraro, who has been a critic of the Bush Administration, particularly with respect to the Niger documents and the Plame outing, and thus extensively quoted by ‘progressive’ sources, was the CIA goon in charge of harassing Libya, and in particular guiding this frame-up through the courts. Always watch out for ulterior motives.

Monday, October 16, 2006

We can see similarities in the stories of most of the identified main players in the Islamist terrorist network who originated in Western countries. We’ve seen the pattern in the case of Ali Mohamed (see my third numbered point here for the particular weirdness that Ali Mohamed, working for the Pentagon, was the American tour guide for al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s fund-raising visits to the U. S. A., visits taken after al-Zawahiri got out of jail for his association with those who assassinated Sadat; living links here and here) and Omar Saeed Sheikh, and the similar but different story of Adam Gadahn. Now they are tying Gadahn to Shehzad Tanweer, an alleged participant in the July 7 London bombers. The pattern is becoming stronger.

Shehzad Tanweer is your typical story. Another Muslim male with no connection to any kind of radicalism, the kind of young man that everybody says is the lastguy they would expect of being a terrorist, suddenly ends up in a prominent role in a terrorist attack. The authorities claimed the MI5 had never heard of any of the terrorists (‘clean skins’), until it was leaked that it had heard of Shehzad Tanweer, when the story was changed to say that the MI5 had made a slight (or here) investigation of him, but didn’t follow up because he appeared not to be a major player. It was leaked that the police or some other agency had planted a tracking bug in a car used by the terrorists (I wonder if there were bugs in the cars used by the 9–11 terrorists), a story met by a sturdy non-denial denial. The inevitable final spin is the claim that the intelligence agency has been ‘unwittingly’ infiltrated by al Qaeda agents. Their lies would be more believable if they didn’t have so many of them.

Of course, we demand an explanation for how these regular fellows living normal lives suddenly turned into raving religious lunatics. The authorities provide a yarn of how they were radicalized at mosques by falling in with the wrong crowd, of how their clothes and personalities changed, etc., etc. Of course, any changes could also be explained by the fact that these men had been recruited by intelligence agencies to infiltrate terrorist cells (or perhaps, for the real hard-core conspiracy theorists, to create terrorist cells). The real question is whether they were double agents, fooling the intelligence agencies, or whether they were ‘turned’ by the group they had infiltrated, or whether they just did what the Western intelligence agencies wanted them to do all along, terrorist acts as part of a ‘strategy of tension’ to lead to wars, conflict, and restrictions on freedom.

The first such young non-radical Muslim male was a guy named OsamabinLaden, known as Tim Osman when he had his guided tour of the United States.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

The three supremely – and, I dare say, uniquely - clear-headedarticles by Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry on how Hezbollah kicked Israel’s ass are all excellent, but the third is probably the best (I’ve noted the choicest parts in red):

“First, the Hezbollah victory has shown that Israel - and any modern and technologically sophisticated Western military force - can be defeated in open battle, if the proper military tactics are employed and if they are sustained over a prolonged period. Hezbollah has provided the model for the defeat of a modern army. The tactics are simple: ride out the first wave of a Western air campaign, then deploy rocket forces targeting key military and economic assets of the enemy, then ride out a second and more critical air campaign, and then prolong the conflict for an extended period. At some point, as in the case of Israel's attack on Hezbollah, the enemy will be forced to commit ground troops to accomplish what its air forces could not. It is in this last, and critical, phase that a dedicated, well-trained and well-led force can exact enormous pain on a modern military establishment and defeat it.

Second, the Hezbollah victory has shown the people of the Muslim world that the strategy employed by Western-allied Arab and Muslim governments - a policy of appeasing US interests in the hopes of gaining substantive political rewards (a recognition of Palestinian rights, fair pricing for Middle Eastern resources, non-interference in the region's political structures, and free, fair and open elections) - cannot and will not work. The Hezbollah victory provides another and different model, of shattering US hegemony and destroying its stature in the region. Of the two most recent events in the Middle East, the invasion of Iraq and the Hezbollah victory over Israel, the latter is by far the most important. Even otherwise anti-Hezbollah groups, including those associated with revolutionary Sunni resistance movements who look on Shi'ites as apostates, have been humbled.

Third, the Hezbollah victory has had a shattering impact on America's allies in the region. Israeli intelligence officials calculated that Hezbollah could carry on its war for upwards of three months after its end in the middle of August. Hezbollah's calculations reflected Israel's findings, with the caveat that neither the Hezbollah nor Iranian leadership could predict what course to follow after a Hezbollah victory. While Jordan's intelligence services locked down any pro-Hezbollah demonstrations, Egypt's intelligence services were struggling to monitor the growing public dismay over the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

Open support for Hezbollah across the Arab world (including, strangely, portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah carried in the midst of Christian celebrations) has put those Arab rulers closest to the United States on notice: a further erosion in their status could loosen their hold on their own nations. It seems likely that as a result, Mubarak and the two Abdullahs are very unlikely to support any US program calling for economic, political or military pressures on Iran. A future war - perhaps a US military campaign against Iran's nuclear sites - might not unseat the government in Tehran, but it could well unseat the governments of Egypt, Jordan and perhaps Saudi Arabia.

At a key point in the Israel-Hezbollah contest, toward the end of the war, Islamist party leaders in a number of countries wondered whether they would be able to continue their control over their movements or whether, as they feared, political action would be ceded to street captains and revolutionaries. The singular notion, now common in intelligence circles in the United States, is that it was Israel (and not Hezbollah) that, as of August 10, was looking for a way out of the conflict.”

The dictators running the Arab states for American and British economic interests made the stunningly cynical move of secretly supporting Israel, hoping for a quick defeat of Hezbollah and a corresponding reduction in Iranian (i.e., Shi’ite) influence and power. Sunni-led governments agreed to allow the Jews to bomb the shit out of a Muslim country – with the cluster bombs and DU falling on a lot of Sunnis – just to attempt to perpetuate their immoral hold on power (this kind of Machiavellian leadership is one of the main things that angers bin Laden). Of course, the reason Iran has become so powerful is entirely thanks to the folly of the American/Zionist attack on Iraq, so what goes around comes around. Since Hezbollah wasn’t defeated quickly, internal pressures on the Arab states became intolerable, and the real fear of popular uprisings unseating governments across the Middle East led to the phone lines to Washington lighting up, which led in turn to the American Establishment putting down its champagne long enough to rein in the neocons and send Condi on her embarrassing trip to Lebanon (when the Israelis greeted her by bombing Qana). The secret recent meeting between Olmert and the Saudis, denied by both sides, must have been interesting.

The authors have many more interesting things to say, including:

“. . . recent history shows that those thousands of students and Lebanese patriots who protested Syria's involvement in Lebanon after the death of Rafiq Hariri found it ironic that they took refuge from the Israeli bombing in tent cities established by the Syrian government. Rice is correct on one thing: Syria's willingness to provide refuge for Lebanese refugees was a pure act of political cynicism - and one that the United States seems incapable of replicating. Syria now is confident of its political position. In a previous era, such confidence allowed Israel to shape a political opening with its most intransigent political enemies.

Tenth, and perhaps most important, it now is clear that a US attack on Iranian nuclear installations would be met with little support in the Muslim world. It would also be met by a military response that would collapse the last vestiges of America's political power in the region. What was thought to be a "given" just a few short weeks ago has been shown to be unlikely. Iran will not be cowed. If the United States launches a military campaign against the Tehran government, it is likely that America's friends will fall by the wayside, the Gulf Arab states will tremble in fear, the 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq will be held hostage by an angered Shi'ite population, and Iran will respond by an attack on Israel. We would now dare say the obvious - if and when such an attack comes, the United States will be defeated.”

Most importantly, the American Establishment knows this. It was great fun to play polo while the neocons ran the American government, but fun is fun and business is business. This is getting dangerous. The Bush Administration is both completely incompetent – I find it amazing that, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, some people continue to believe that fools like Cheney and Rumsfeld actually have a serious plan to lead to American hegemony over world oil resources – and treasonous, running American foreign policy for the sole benefit of the Israeli generals. An attack on Iran – whether by the United States or Israel – will permanently wreck a hundred years of careful planning and management of oil resources. That’s why the Establishment, which clearly, despite what Noam says, hasn’t been running the United States, had to get back in the saddle, and why there won’t be an attack on Iran (another reason is that Asian central bankers, who with a stroke of the pen can determine whether the United States is bankrupt or not, won’t let it happen).

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Jefferson Morley brought an action against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain records pertaining to George Joannides, a CIA officer stationed in Miami in 1963 involved in psychological warfare against Cuba, a job which involved his working with the anti-Castro Cubans associated with Lee Harvey Oswald (an issue referred to by me here and here). Morley and Jim Lesar discuss the background to the case, and the inadequacy of the FOIA in the face of CIA stonewalling. In fact, Morley lost (pdf of the judgment by a judge appointed by Bush on September 10, 2001).

The CIA has every reason to be nervous about this, as the issue is still in the news in the person of a prominent anti-Castro Cuban, LuisPosada (not to mention his comrade-in-arms, Orlando Bosch, also living in the United States). The latest revelation is that the CIA knew about Luis Posada’s terrorist attack on Cuba but did nothing to either stop it or warn Cuba (this is all a bit rich as Posada was working for the CIA, making the revelation another limited hangout). It looks like the U. S. is going to keep Posada in detention until after the upcoming elections (when he’ll be quietly released), no doubt fearing the obvioushypocrisy of allowing a self-admitted terrorist to go free in the middle of a Republican campaign that it is the only party capable of fighting the ‘war on terror’. The Bush Administration wants to pawn him off on a third country other than the two – Cuba and Venezuela – which have a legitimate interest in prosecuting him, but to date Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama have all refused to accept him.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Over 600 people attended a conference on boycotting Israel over the weekend in Toronto, but it might as well have been held in absolute secrecy for all the media coverage it received. Total boycotts of Israeli apartheid are the wave of the future (BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement), and it is a wonder – well, given the stranglehold the Lobby has over the media, it’s not really a wonder at all – that the media isn’t all over this. The conference was organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid.

From Newsweek, an article bySelig S. Harrison(my emphasis in red; there are no coincidences in diplomacy):

“On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to ‘abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.’ In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would ‘respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.’

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a ‘criminal state’ guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse. My conversations made clear that North Korea's missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date "in the future" were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that ‘soft’ tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.”

From the excellent “Rolling Blunder” by Fred Kaplan (my emphasis in red):

“. . . on Oct. 21, 1994, the United States and North Korea signed a formal accord based on those outlines, called the Agreed Framework. Under its terms, North Korea would renew its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lock up the fuel rods, and let the IAEA inspectors back in to monitor the facility. In exchange, the United States, with financial backing from South Korea and Japan, would provide two light-water nuclear reactors for electricity (explicitly allowed under the NPT), a huge supply of fuel oil, and a pledge not to invade North Korea.

The accord also specified that, upon delivery of the first light-water reactor (the target date was 2003), intrusive inspections of suspected North Korean nuclear sites would begin. After the second reactor arrived, North Korea would ship its fuel rods out of the country. It would essentially give up the ability to build nuclear weapons.

Other sections of the accord – which were less publicized – pledged both sides to ‘move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.’ Within three months of its signing, the two countries were to lower trade barriers and install ambassadors in each other's capitals. The United States was also to ‘provide full assurances’ that it would never use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against North Korea.

Initially, North Korea kept to its side of the bargain. The same cannot be said of our side. Since the accord was not a formal treaty, Congress did not have to ratify the terms, but it did balk on the financial commitment. So did South Korea. The light-water reactors were never funded.”

The bottom line is that the Bush Administration, and the Republicans who blocked funding of Clinton’s agreement, got exactly what could be expected, if not exactly what some of them wanted (not what they wanted as a real North Korean nuclear threat complicates the neocon attacks on Iran for a phony nuclear threat). The North Koreans are doing the only things they know how to receive some attention. The general neocon plan is to label neocon enemies as insane, but the North Koreans are acting completely rationally (as are the Iranians) – it’s the American leaders who are insane.

Monday, October 09, 2006

The Sideshow on the role of James Carville in undermining American democracy by giving a head’s up to the Republicans (through his wife Mary Matalin) to block Kerry from having any realistic chance at winning the electoral college. If Carville is still a Clinton operative, the plan may have been that Hillary’s chances of a win in ‘08 would be furthered by a Bush win in ‘04.

Friday, October 06, 2006

From Canadian Dimension, “In Defense of Divestment: Unpacking the Israeli Lobby’s Arguments”, by Ed Janzen. One of the many, many problems with Zionism is that we have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort rebutting arguments that are so silly they merit only contempt. Since the Lobby controls all the mainstream media, the pro-Israel arguments are all the the average person ever has an opportunity to see, thus necessitating all the effort spent in pointing out the obvious.

Canadian Dimension also provides a link to the recent James Petras article on challenging the Lobby. He makes good suggestions, but the underlying problem is not addressed (although he touches on the issue at points 2 and 7). There is no political possibility of doing the things that Petras suggests until we emasculate the basis for Lobby power, the financial and media support of North American (and British) Zionists. The only way to do that is to make it expensive for them to play their petty tribal games, through a secondary boycott of businesses that support the Lobby or are owned or controlled by those who support the Lobby.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

It is curious that the Republicans are in the middle of a sex and cover-up scandal (which seems to go further than cover-up and amounts to aiding and abetting the commission of a series of criminal acts) at the same time that the most damning evidence of Bush Administration foreknowledge – and negligent, or worse, ignoring of foreknowledge – of the September 11 attacks has come out. Rice and Hadley received a detailed warning from Tenet on July 10, 2001 concerning an imminent al Qaeda attack on targets which could include those within the United States (the first time this story came out, from Time, the warning was supposed to emphasize overseas attacks), and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft received the same briefing within a week. Although Ashcroft denies receiving such a briefing, The Mahablog notes that it explains his refusal to fly commercial domestic flights starting in July, an unexplained anomaly before we heard the real details about this Tenet briefing. Tenet also explained the whole thing to the 9–11 Commission, both the timing and content of his meetings (in fact, he appears to have done a restaging of the briefing for members of the Commission, something panelist Ben-Veniste completely forgot about, and then suddenly remembered when challenged with the facts), and the 9-11 Commission, needless to say, didn’t bother to mention any of it in its lying cover-up report (Philip Zelikow, who now works for none other than Rice, should be on the hot seat for this outright deception). Rice says it is ‘incomprehensible’ that she would ignore such a warning, which is not a denial that she received it (a good thing for her, as we know she did receive it). The only decent thing for Rice to do to prove she is not a liar, or worse, is to authorize Tenet to release the full contents of the briefing.

It appears that the Establishment – you know, the group that Chomsky claims rules the world – has finally decided to stop playing polo and sipping champagne long enough to get around to reining in the Bush Administration. Talk of another war, one that would put a big dent in their trust funds by collapsing the international economy, was the last straw. Suddenly, buggergate comes out, known to the mainstream media for months if not years but carefully covered up until it was time for a rare Democrat October Surprise, and Woodward receives his new marching orders, this time not to make George out to be some kind of new Churchill but to strike right at the heart of the Republican message that they are the only party capable of looking after American domestic security. They are forcing Rove to rely on computer vote fraud to win the upcoming elections, fraud that will be so obvious that they won’t be able to keep their lovely machines through to the next presidential election.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Musharraf claims that OmarSaeedSheikh was a British intelligence agent. Of course, Musharraf would say something like that, as it takes the heat off his own country for some of the things that Omar Sheikh has allegedly done, all supposedly on behalf of Pakistani military intelligence. On the other hand, Musharraf’s story fits. Omar Sheikh was from a well-to-do family, educated at a public school, and had excellent marks. Athletic, aggressive, and intelligent. A young Muslim male at a time when such an agent might well be useful. A text-book mark for British intelligence recruitment. Like all alleged terrorists, he suddenly turned into a violent Islamist religious extremist, and ended up in an Afghan training camp (where Aukai Collins knew him as Umar). As usual with all these ‘terrorists’, all his old friends now say they have trouble imagining such a thing happening to him. He was supposedly radicalized in Bosnia, but Bosnia seems to have been both a school for Islamic terrorists, and the foundation for NATO/German/French/British/American shenanigans in manipulating Islamist terrorist groups in the proto-WarOnTerror phony fight as a ruse for the ClashOfCivilizations-leading-to-NewMiddleEast crapola. So either it is a legitimate 180 degree personality change, or he is fitting into the role he has to play to infiltrate Islamist terrorist organizations on behalf of British intelligence. Which do you think it is?

Omar Saeed Sheikh first made a name for himself by kidnapping and executing four ‘tourists’, three British and one American, an interesting choice of target. He has subsequently been traded for a planeload full of hijacked Indians, and been convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl (the latter conviction put into question by Musharraf’s remarks). Most famously, he allegedly wired $100,000 to Atta on behalf of Pakistani intelligence (who the big-conspiracy theorists claim was working on behalf of the CIA), and even received back from Atta the excess money Atta didn’t need.

I’ve always had trouble with this story. Why would Pakistani intelligence send Atta a relatively small amount of money using a method, and an agent, that could be so easily traced back to them? Why would they take the risk of receiving Atta’s left-over money? On the other hand, if Omar Sheikh was working for British intelligence, with a mandate to put the blame for 9–11 on Pakistani intelligence, sending Atta some easily traced money, and receiving some money back, all to frame Pakistan, makes perfect sense. All the sources for the story are out of India, which has an obvious motive in implicating Pakistan. Of course, this scenario involves the necessity that British intelligence had foreknowledge of the nature and details of the 9–11 plot, and was working hand-in-hand with the plotters to further the bin Laden/Islamic terrorist/Pakistani back-story of September 11.